Jonathan Williams, David Hockney, color transparency, 2.25 x 2.5 inches

Jonathan Williams
A Palpable Elysium
May 24 – July 21, 2012
Institute 193, Lexington

A Palpable Elysium features portraits of the great artists and writers the late poet, publisher, and photographer Jonathan Williams sought out over the course of his lifetime—some of them famous, some of them obscure. For years, Williams presented these photographs as a slideshow, delivering presentations in hundreds of venues in the United States and Great Britain.

Williams’s evocative, unpretentious portraits document some of the most extraordinary personalities of the 20th century. Institute 193’s exhibition emphasizes figures with deep cultural ties to Kentucky, such as Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, John Jacob Niles, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and Guy Davenport.